1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications. More particularly, the present invention relates to a telecommunications network apparatus and method that provide identification information of a calling party to a telecommunications relay service center when the caller is connected to the selected telecommunications relay service by dialing a universal telephone number.
2. Background Information
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandated that all telecommunications carriers implement a toll free 711 phone number for dialing access to telecommunications relay services (TRS). Each state is required to designate a telecommunications relay service center, corresponding to a toll free telephone number, to receive 711 calls originating within the state. By providing a national 711 system, the FCC hopes to accomplish faster, simpler and universal dialing from communications devices to reach a telecommunications relay service center. Specifically, the “universal” 3 digit number allows people in need of communications assistance to reach a telecommunications relay service center from anywhere in the United States by dialing the simple universal number.
Telecommunications relay services are normally provided by a telecommunications relay service center. The telecommunications relay service allows people with differing speech and/or hearing abilities to communicate with each other through a communications network using an agent or interpreter. Currently, a telecommunications relay service is typically staffed with communication assistants equipped with TTY devices and standard voice operation telephones. It is the responsibility of the telecommunications relay service provider's equipment to identify and be able to respond via voice and text to the caller.
Two methods have attempted to implement the 711 service, as described above, but each method is saddled with drawbacks. In particular, in a switch based implementation, telecommunications providers have encountered problems at the switch level translating a 711 dialing pattern into a toll free number. Furthermore, in switch types that allow translation of 711 into a toll free telephone number, telecommunications relay services have not been able to receive the identifying information that identifies a device and/or subscriber placing the call. It is desirable, however, for information such as the subscriber's name, address and telephone number, etc. to be automatically received at the telecommunications relay service center so that the information can be associated in a database with caller profiles that can be used to increase efficiency in processing calls.
The switch based method is very hardware intensive and costly, and is not a viable solution for providing the identifying information to the telecommunications relay service center. Thus, another method for providing the 711 service uses an Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN). The current Advance Intelligent Network methods, however, do not reliably forward the identifying information to the telecommunications relay service center.
That is, the present AIN system relies on a calling party number (CPN) field to be passed to the telecommunications relay service center. The calling party field is an unreliable parameter for identifying callers. For example, a caller may have requested to have her telephone number blocked from appearing, in which case the calling party number is not forwarded. Also, in some cases the calling party number is not sent, because some originating stations, such as private branch exchanges (PBXs) are not required to send calling party numbers. Moreover, the current AIN method employs a trigger that is analogous to call forwarding. Thus, some switches show 711, which caused the trigger and “forwarded” the number, as the calling party number.
A problem is known to occur in both of the current methods for implementing 711 insofar as the telecommunications relay service center is not consistently provided with the caller's identifying information. Because of the failure to identify the calling party to the telecommunications relay service center when the caller dials 711, telecommunications relay service centers have resorted to instructing callers to dial their toll free number directly. Thus, callers are required to know a different toll free number for each state, rather than a simple single national number.
To avoid the problems set forth above, a telecommunications system and method is needed for reliably forwarding identifying information about the calling device to the telecommunications relay service center.